The Anakin and Padme stuff was embarrassing. No chemistry, line delivery that sounded like it came out of the mouths of children doing their first 6th grade stage play, etc.

It’s terrible. I said that from the start, no shying away from it but it’s 10 minutes of the film that has really great action scenes. Star Wars fans have 4 major moans. Jar-Jar, that annoying fucking kid, the shitty romance and ‘NOOOOO!’. TPM has two of them but is still by far the best, probably this week, it wasn’t when they were released or something similar perhaps. TPM rules! Everything is shit but podrace.

I love the Yoda v Dooku fight. TPM is by far the worst prequel, in fact the worst Star Wars film ever, it’s an incredibly pointless film.

It’s kind of strange how certain bits of SW hog the perception and block out everything else.

For instance, for some Luke is always going to be a kid whining about power converters despite later going on to blow up the death star and survive two lightsaber duels with Darth absolute-walkin’-force-of-death Vader.

Oh I forgot midichlorians so 3 of the 5 worst things ever about Star Wars are in the Prequel film people now say is the best but didn’t when it came out. At the time they were right, it’s shit and AOTC and ROTS are much better.

This thread is really endless. I love how the same arguments come back again and again like a chorus in a song.’

AOTC has some good bits, I thought Obi-Wan fighting Jango was great, but not enough to counter the bad stuff. Some of the fight stuff in AOTC was pretty awful, the lightsaber fights sucked. Yoda vs Dooky…OMG that was bad.

The rest of the movie sucked, still. 7 good minutes of awesome Jedi stuff doesn’t make a poorly paced, poorly written movie much better, especially when the central relationship that is supposed to be the emotional core of the movie is laugh-worthy. The Yoda fight I liked back in the day in the theater, but I don’t think it really holds up anymore… it looks like a coked-up Sonic jumping around an old man. Cool for its time, I guess.

Way back when I was suckered into the time and money to view a monstrosity called The Magic Christian - which was a bit too Python for mine young mind (and I had not yet been exposed to the proper Monty); so it was a bit of a boring shock. Only bit I liked was Lee as Ship’s Vampire, a ten-second bit, perhaps.

Analysts blame Solo’s performance at least partially on potential fan fatigue with the increasing release frequency of new Star Wars movies. Solo comes roughly five months after the release of The Last Jedi, leading industry insiders to “concede Disney and Lucasfilm aren’t likely to release two Star Wars movie so close together again, regardless of whether they are anthology films…or part of the official episodes, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its follow-up,” THR notes.

I’ve seen “fatigue” used as a reason for Solo’s lackluster box office. I think it was bad timing as it was released so close to Infinity War and Deadpool 2 and being something not many people wanted to see.

I don’t buy the fatigue thing. It’s a lazy excuse. Since November we’ve had Ragnarok, Black Panther, Infinity War, and Deadpool. All Marvel superhero properties, 3 of them very much connected. Those 4 movies that came out within a 6 month span are going to combine for close to $5 billion.

Fatigue isn’t the problem, the product released was the problem. I haven’t seen Solo, but I hear it’s an entertaining enough movie. The problem is that it’s a movie no one cared about to begin with (except maybe Miller and Lord, but they were booted off it) and Disney assumed they could sell it just because it’s Star Wars.

The timing of the release I’m sure plays a factor in that Star Wars should probably consider sticking to December releases. But it’s hard to say how much of an impact that would have had. I suspect Solo still would have bombed, maybe just not as hard. Then again, maybe it would have given Disney time to figure out a good way to market it.

So, could the Yoda/Dokku fight have been done better, or would it have been better not to do it at all?

If they had used the Empire Strikes Back Muppet, holding a lightsabre that’s a painted stick, with visible rods holding its arms up, hitting Christopher Lee while Frank Oz yelled HIIIII-YA in his Miss Piggy voice, it would have been done better.

I rewatched The Phantom Menace last week and its biggest sin is that it is just tedious. There are some great visual concepts, and even a couple of fun performances, but aside from the podrace and the lightsaber fight at the end it is an incredibly dull, static film.

Plus, the Japanese/Jamaican/Jewish aspects of certain characters have really not aged well. (Lucas must have been up to ‘J’ in his A-to-Z of comedy stereotypes the week he wrote it.)